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Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate
Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate
Audiobook9 hours

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate

Written by Rose George

Narrated by Pearl Hewitt

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

On ship-tracking websites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship; each ship is laden with boxes; each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy. We buy, so we must ship. Without all those dots, the world would not work.

Freight shipping has been no less revolutionary than the printing press or the Internet, yet it is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, shipping revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system. Infesting our waters, poisoning our air, and a prime culprit of acoustic pollution, shipping is environmentally indefensible. And then there are the pirates.

Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls; she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force; she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales.

Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 25, 2017
ISBN9781541478282
Author

Rose George

Rose George is the author of Nine Pints, The Big Necessity and Ninety Percent of Everything. A freelance journalist, she has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications. She lives in Yorkshire.

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Reviews for Ninety Percent of Everything

Rating: 3.9693876846938774 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An interesting read, but I was hoping for more about the actual goods, not an account of seafarers and their plight through history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting insights into a largely ignored world, but near the end it felt like a highschooler trying to hit their word minimum; large chunks of the book become devoted to whale research and Britain's merchant navy in WWII. Not uninteresting, just highly tangential.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Fine book about what life is like in the world of containerized freight shipping - but maybe a tiny bit more than I really needed to know about it. Life on these ships seems really hard, made worse by the totally non-romantic piracy situation.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After reading this, you will know that merchant seamen are some of the unsung heroes of our supply chain. The occupation is increasingly pursued by people from poorer countries because of the risks (injury, death, piracy), low pay, monotonously hard work, long months at sea, limited legal recourse, and openness to exploitation and abuse. However, if it is entirely outsourced, in case of a world war, we may suffer tremendously, as the COVID-19-induced logistical bottlenecks and shortages have shown us. I appreciate much more the efforts of those who keep goods and services supplied. I am part of the fulfillment industry myself, but understood little of how dependent we are upon container ships. Planes cannot carry certain materials, and trucks and trains cannot cross the ocean. So, most manufactured and raw materials come by boat. It is a necessary service, but less regulated than one might think.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Interesting topic but author feels free ti link about seafarer
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not so much "inside shipping" as the author staving off the crushing boredom of her 9,000 mile voyage by writing about whales, old shipwrecks and piracy law. I would have appreciated more colour and insight on the Filipino, Romanian, Chinese etc. crew she shared the voyage with. All we really come to understand about them is they're doing it for the money, which isn't very interesting.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the compelling and interesting story of how those big steel boxes, shipping containers, you see on trains and trucks make their way across the oceans.George was given the unique opportunity to take passage on the Maersk Kendal on a voyage from Felixstowe, UK to Singapore. It’s a trip that took her to points of call in Europe, through the Suez Canal (dubbed by all crews passing through as the “Marlboro Canal” for the copious amounts of said cigarette passed out as bribes there), and through pirate infested waters.The huge container ships are the product of a 1956 innovation, the standardized shipping container, which started to revolutionize shipping in the late 1960s. It reduced the percentage of an item’s price that represents shipping costs from 25 percent to 2.5 percent. It destroyed the influence of dockworkers. Whereas it would take days to unload cargo from even a medium size ship in pre-container days, even the largest container ship can be unloaded in less than a day. It also destroyed local jobs. It’s cheaper to ship fish caught off the coast of Scotland to China to have them filleted and ship them back rather than hire Scotsmen to do the filleting.The crews of the container ships don’t know or care what are in the containers unless it’s toxic, flammable, or needs refrigeration.Neither, for that matter, do port authorities. In the wake of 9/11, the US pushed an international protocol, the Secure Freight Initiative for cargo inspection. Implemented in 2007, it sought to inspect every container being received in the US. By 2013, it had managed, at best, five percent in Hong Kong. It still seems merely a security bureaucrat’s dream.And sometimes the containers fall off the ship or have their contents pilfered in in port.The ships themselves are crewed by small numbers of people with Filipinos being the predominant nationality. They work cheap – sometimes way cheaper than the official books maintained for the International Transport Worker’s Federation indicate. And they speak English. Attempts have been made to institute stripped down English dialects, Maritime English and Seaspeak, but they are little used.That contributes to a sense of isolation among the multinational crews, not really alleviated by the onboard gyms, certainly not alleviated by the poor food. Crews, at least in 2013 (the situation seems to have improved lately), had no internet or phone access, their emails routed through the captain for transmission. They spend their off deck hours in their spartan furnished berths.One of the narrative side trips George takes is to the Seafarer’s Center in Immingham, UK. It is one of many religious organizations tending to ships’ crews throughout the world. These days, in line with the general decline in church attendance, their church services are taken advantage of less than the cheap SIM cards, batteries, and warm clothing they provide. A popular item is cheap souvenirs for families back home, evidence of visits the seafarers never made. A crewmember on a container ship may spend as little as two hours in port after months at sea. A particularly poignant story is told of the crew of one ship who simply wanted, in their short time on land, to walk barefoot on grass for an hour. (For Maersk employees, there’s no drinking on ship or on shore.)The sea is, of course, a hostile environment, and George discusses the various unpleasant things that can happen to the human body adrift in a lifeboat. The mariner code of honor – that those in peril are assisted no matter how much expense incurred in missed berthing slots or fuel or time – is fraying. Captain Glenn Wostenholme of the Maersk Kendal, a man with more than 40 years at sea, won a medal for rescuing part of the crew of a Thai cargo ship in 2007. Of the five ships in the area when a distress call was put out, one simply ignored it. Two said they would answer the call and didn’t.There are few consequences for ignoring this code even though it is actually a legal obligation under an international convention. The legal environment international shipping exists in makes enforcing liability claims against it or labor regulations complicated. Ships fly “flags of convenience” (the Maersk Kendal has a vast cupboard of different flags) and are registered to various countries including some that have no connection to the sea at all. Mongolia is a popular country of registration along with Panama and Liberia. The shipowners may belong to a third country.And this legal arrangement can not only screw crews over with rickety, unsafe ships and unanswered rescue pleas, companies have been known to simply abandon their crews in port with no money when they go bankrupt or determine they simply don’t want to run a ship anymore. Some stranded crews have been known to take to killing stray dogs for food.And, of course, there are pirates, particularly Somali pirates at the time of this book. (The Somali piracy problem seems to have lessened in the years since with prosecutions, rare when it was written, being stepped up.) George spends some time with a multi-national force patrolling the vast “high risk area” extending from eastern Africa into the Indian Ocean for pirates.George is markedly less sympathetic to the pirates than the military people and even Maersk Kendal’s crew are. She quotes fatuous articles from business magazines on the “entrepreneurial model” of Somali piracy which aims at securing hostages for ransom. The navies feel sorry for the Somalis they detain. (Rumors have that the Russian Navy simply blew up Somali pirate vessels along with their crew.) She talked with a man taken hostage by Somalians, and we hear of torture, bad food, and the terror of dealing every day with khat-chewing, gun-waving Somali. We also hear from a highly paid consultant on the intricacies of conducting ransom negotiations with pirates. No one, including George, seems to seriously entertain the idea of simply destroying known pirate bases in Somalia.Besides tagging along with the pirate patrol, George takes us to a Massachusetts whale watching group to talk about the disruptive effects of maritime traffic, specifically the noise of ships’ propellers, on marine life. Ship’s crews generally like whales and dolphins and are happy to see them and slow their ships down to alleviate the ocean’s noise problem in particularly affected areas. Ship owners, of course, often have other ideas.George occasionally reaches back into history for fascinating stories and facts. She does that with the lack of respect the merchant marine received in America and Britain during World War Two as well as her chapter on the miseries of being in a lifeboat.In 1904, Andrew Furuseth, a labor organizer for seafarers, was threatened with jail. His reply was, go ahead, put him in jail. His cell would be bigger than his ship quarters, the food better, and the isolation less than what he would suffer at sea. Captain Wostenholme, near the end of his career, emails his employer, “You can see how we are really thought of . . . Riffraff that no one really cares about, no matter the lip service paid to our safety and welfare by the likes of owners, flag states . . . We are mere chattels, a human resource, dispensable nonentities.”George’s book is very slightly dated now but still a fascinating, well-presented account of a life that most of us are fortunate enough to avoid – even though we benefit from “that ninety percent of everything” it delivers to us.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There is a high chance that you are reading this on some sort of screen that arrived in your country in a container, or box, having been shipped across the oceans of the world to the high street shop of your choice. The ship that brought it was one of 40,000 that ply the world’s oceans carrying 80% of everything you purchase and 90% of the energy that you consume.

    This huge global business is safely out of sight and out of mind; you’ve probably never even thought about it.

    To find out about this secret behemoth, George has travelled the across the seas on container ships and naval vessels, talking to officers, crew, engineers, chaplains and dockworkers to see if she can scratch the surface of it. It is an industry that deliberately chooses opaqueness; ship owners sail under flags of convenience, regulation is scant and rarely enforced and the law seems not to apply at sea. She speaks to those who track some of the 10,000 containers that fall overboard each year, environmentalists who are trying to tell us just how polluting the ships are and goes to Somalia to see the modern pirates being tried.

    In this book George concentrates more on the effects of the shipping industry, both positive and negative, considers the challenges that it faces as costs are driven down and the implications of further changes to come. Rightly so, she gets angry about lots of things, pirates, the scant respect of the law and the conditions that some crews have to suffer. This is an industry that uses the flag of convenience to escape taxes, responsibility for environmental disasters and has no desire to change at the moment, but she does get drawn into the almost romantic notion of ploughing the oceans bringing goods from faraway places. It is a good companion book to Down To The Sea With Ships by Horatio Clare. 3.5 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a fascinating book. Difficult to categorise as it is so broad in scope, covering travel on a container ship from Felixstowe to Singapore, the life of the seafarer, piracy, law of the sea, ecology and everything in between. The writing is exceptionally good, always finding the right telling vignette. The quality of writing and the theme of the sea unify what could otherwise seem a mish-mash of subjects. Definitely a 100% recommendation.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As the title implies, freight shipping is important, but overlooked. The author looks into the industry which appears to be impossible to regulate and awfully dreary at best for the sellers, yet surprisingly compelling. The heart of the book is George's journey on the giant container ship Maersk Kendal from Rotterdam to Singapore by way of Suez. Apart from her own journey, George explores the hardship of the sailor's life and those who depends on them, shipwrecks, the effect of shipping on whales, and Somali pirates. It's an interesting glimpse into a vital part of human life that can be beyond the brain's capability to comprehend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found myself completely absorbed by much of this book, which is a journalist's account of a trip on a Maersk container ship and her review of the workings of the shipping industry. Your mileage may vary, but I was fascinated (and at times disgusted) by the commercial realities and the human stories - from the impact of flagging out to the economics of piracy and the intimate loneliness of modern seafaring life.I suspect I will reread this; I certainly found plenty of food for thought (not least in the closing chapters on environmental impact) and was touched by the chapter on the church's involvement to try and reassure seafarers that somebody out there cares in the face of elaborate corporate structures that remove any accountability for ship owners or flag states and leave the sailors literally at sea with little protection and less oversight.Well written and unexpectedly engaging.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Another excellent book from Rose George! I love how she writes on topics that most people never think about or are even aware of, yet they are vital to our way (privileged) of living in this world...She writes well, draws you in by constructing a compelling narrative that she intersperses with fascinating and relevant history, politics, economics, etc. Great book!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite well done and one of the few books to refer back to the seminal book on the topic, The Box. Clearly containerization has changed how we all live and work and it has been a major influence on globalization. Her captain will be well out of it when he retires. She doesn't like the Somali pirates and neither do I. (When touring in Copenhagen we had a Somali cabdriver take us to the dock to catch our ship; the Americans had recently shot dead three or four of the pirates in rescuing a ship's captain and I was happy about this). Excellent on the changes that have come to shipping and the few people, such as the church, who care.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A revealing and eye opening look into the world of modern merchant shipping. The author Rose George decided to take a one-way journey from England to Singapore on the MV Kendal – one of the largest container ships in the Maersk fleet. Along the way she recants readers with tales of tragedy, heroism, boredom and even piracy from the early days of the clipper ships through to our present cost & time constrained world. The overriding discovery from her journey was the isolation and loneliness of the men and women who serve in this most important yet evidently shrouded business – an industry the author explains, which brings us ninety precent of our consumable lives.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rose George takes the reader inside an industry that most of us know nothing about. As her subtitle states, the shipping industry really is an invisible one. Speed, profit, and efficiency are valued, but the men who work on the ships often are not, frequently referred to as "the human element." George talks about piracy, shipwrecks, and the many other dangers that seafarers face. She also talks about her month aboard a container ship. That first-hand account and George's excellent writing make a subject that could have been dreadfully dull into a fascinating book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Like in her earlier book, The Big Necessity, in Ninety Percent of Everything Rose George takes you on a tour of something you don't think much about (in this case global shipping) and makes it fascinating. From the invention of the container, which revolutionized shipping, to the terrible conditions on many ships she provides a glimpse at another world. I'd heard stories of Somali pirates, but hadn't thought much about the seamen who live with their threat as part of of their job.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Even the most industrialized of nations gets at least some or part of the products it consumes transported by ships. Today it's mostly via container ships that ply the oceans of the world.I really enjoyed George's look at "toilets" around the world, so had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, I didn't get quite what I expected.While I learned a lot about the industry that I didn't know, or just knew bits and pieces about, this book didn't catch my interest as much as her previous book. I was able to put this book aside after a chapter or two without any nagging feeling of needing to know what was yet to come.All in all, while interesting in what it reveals about one of the industries so much of our life depends on, and the people involved in it, at the same time it seems lacking. While I can't quite describe what more I would have liked to have read about, it seems like she could have delved deeper into the subject than she did.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a book I really wanted to like. The title made me think it would reveal how a secretive industry works in all aspects, but the focus is squarely on the people who occupy the ships moving the goods we need—and the goods we only think we need—around the world. Shipping can be understood as all of the logistics that goes into global trade (financing, production, storage, and movement) or just the act of moving goods across the water. Clearly the latter is author Rose George's emphasis (though she does touch on the former in parts), as she takes an excursion on a ship moving containers from Rotterdam to Singapore. Veering between firsthand accounts of the experience and voluminous research on the history of merchant sailing, on pirates, on the environmental aspects of the industry, and much more, the book tells a story by following the chronological and geographical path of her voyage.I won't fault George for writing a book that didn't jibe with my interests or expectations, but I wished the narrative would have pulled me along stronger than it did. The build-up to her actually getting on the ship—discussing the accidents, sexism, and other perils of the profession—is loaded with psychological suspense. This raises the bar early and makes it difficult for the author to sustain anything as strong for the rest of the book. George's journalistic account that blends firsthand experience and lots of research reminds me of John McPhee's writing, but I have the feeling that in the hands of the latter the book would have been a lot more interesting, making an important and hidden industry memorable to all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    If I need only 25 words to complete a review for the Early Reviewers, "Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate" by Rose George should probably suffice enough. But still, I'll add this book was very interesting and makes you think about how you get stuff from around the world and what the kind of system means to everyone.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I must admit I've never given any thought to the merchant navy, especially how essential their services and how poorly treated their ranks are. Thinking of the modern sailor, I would have assumed that they still faced the same natural dangers and the threat of piracy, but that overall their condition had improved: better nutrition, freedom at ports, international safety regulations for vessels, fair wages, efficient disaster relief/rescue operations, and accountability when one of these criteria weren't met. Well, I was sorely wrong. An illuminating look at a grieviously treated and near invisible portion of our population. She also dedicates a chapter to the negative impact shipping has on sea life. Sadness all around.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Few of us who are not directly involved with saltwater cargo shipping know anything about the industry. Yet much of what we use each day—90% for the British and probably only somewhat less for Americans—is transported over the oceans. Rose George informs us about containerized shipping in a book that takes a minimum of effort to read but manages to be highly informative. This book is full of surprises. There is very little legal regulation or oversight of such matters as how seamen are treated and even of insuring that they receive their promised wages. She explains how flags of convenience limit the responsibility of ship owners. Most seamen today originate in third world countries, although most ship’s officers do not. Container ships are loaded and unloaded very quickly, so crew members get little time in port. Thus, being a seaman is a very lonely business. Containerized shipping is relatively cheap. A sweater can travel 3,000 miles over the ocean for two and a half cents—a can of beer for a penny. Crewmen do not know what is in the containers and thus what they are hauling. Partly the book is a travelogue as the author travels on the Kendal from Britain to Singapore. This ship is owned by Maersk Line, the largest container shipping company in the world with 600 vessels. The Kendal can carry 6,000 containers. Travelogues are often episodic, but even for this genre, the narrative seems disjointed. George devotes two chapters to the dangers of piracy from Somalia to ships and their crews. An ecological chapter details damage done to animal life, especially whales, by large vessels. Another chapter covers accidents, rescues at sea, merchant ships torpedoed in World War II and the public disdain for merchant seamen and the hardships they suffered during the war. In all, Rose George has given us a very informative book about a largely unseen but quite important part of our contemporary world.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Ninety Percent of Everything" by Rose George exposes the reader to the hidden world of the shipping industry. Few are aware of the industry that brings us nearly everything we buy. This book is a wide-ranging narrative about marine shipping. George takes a journey of nearly ten thousand miles aboard a container vessel. She boards a naval ship to go on convoy duty to protect merchant ships from pirates. George gives a firsthand account of the monotony of shipboard life and the dangers of being at sea. She provides insight into the economics of shipping and the industry’s environmental impact. She relates the stories of heroic rescues and tragic losses. The book is an interesting read that will provide the reader with an increased appreciation for those who risk their lives to transport ninety percent of everything.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Rose George's latest book takes its title from the fact that 90% of ALL goods are transported by sea. In Ninety Percent of Everything, Ms George took as her task to illuminate this nearly invisible industry that we all depend on. In this engrossing book we get a glimpse of life aboard the Maersk Kendal out of the English port of Felixstowe bound for Singapore. I say glimpse because we really don't get to know much of the crew but such is the nature of the transient merchant crew; where five nationalities of twenty men and one women (cook) comprise the current compliment.The Kendal is a Korean-built container ship with 6,188 containers ("boxes" to the crew) on board. The Kendal is only about 5 years old.Ms George describes the spartan life and facilities on the Kendal from the perspective of her status as a supernumerary.However, Ninety Percent of Everything is no boring travelogue. Ms George does an excellent job of weaving in stories and background of other ships and episodes to illuminate a topic. For example, as the Kendal nears the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC) and the threat from Somali-based pirates, She digresses into the topic of piracy at some length. She meets with EU-NAVFOR personnel, visits the warship, Vasco de Gama, and describes the harrowing ransoming of the Marida Marguerite.In other chapters, Ms George describes the efforts of the charitable seamen benevolent organizations to offer aid and comfort to seamen regardless of nationality. In another chapter Ms George describes the terrifying prospect of the ship sinking and being a drift in a lifeboat.A theme that resonates through the book is the wretched conditions that any able seamen (AB) must endure. It seems the international waters is awash in unscrupulous ship owners, seamen agents, captains etc with the average seamen at the bottom and subject to every form of exploitation. In summary, though non-fiction, Ninety Percent of Everything is quite the page-turner and is an excellent read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have lived in Savannah, Georgia for about eight years now. Savannah is the second or third busiest port in the US. When you get near the river, you can see the massive container ships come right up the Savannah River. As a student I always wondered what sort of people work on boats like that and what their lives are like. Despite the volume of cargo moving in and out, most people here are only dimly aware about what goes on in the port and what's being shipped. The port is in an industrial part of town and the security is tight, so you can't just have a stroll around the docks. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, because it answered some many of my questions. Savannahians in particular (including myself) and people in general don't understand how much our modern world with all its international foods and products rests on maritine transportation. In an early chapter, the author, Rose George, does a non-scientific, man-on-the-street survey of people, so see if they know what percentage of goods comes by sea. The highest guess she got was thirty percent. As the title implies, it's three times that. Most people assume our goods come via plane because they're some much quicker. Container ships may move at a relatively glacial pace, but they cannot be beat for cost-effictiveness. In one of the most shocking lines of the book, the reader finds that it is cheaper to have fish caught in Scotland, frozen and shipped to China to be filleted, and then frozen and shipped back to be sold in Scottish grocery stores, RATHER than pay to Scottish workers to process the fish. The obsession with the bottom-line boggles my mind in this case, but it gives the reader an idea that shipping by boat only adds a penny or two to the cost of most goods.Ms. George manages to book a passage on a Danish cargo ship that is captained by an experienced British mariner. There were many bits of this book I found surprising. To begin with, sailors that work for this particular copy are unable to drink alcohol, even when while in port. With the speed at which container ships are off and re-loaded, the crew would only hae a few hours to drink anyway. To paraphrase the captain," I used to wonder if I could catch dinner, now I wonder if I can pick up a newspaper."Most of the ships are now crewed by a mixture of nationalities with a heavy concentration of Filipinos (because they'll work for low wages and many speak English). It's appalling to find how often sailors are screwed out of their wages and treated shabbily in general by officers, the shipping companies, or the employment agencies. Companies are able to get away with abuses in part because of the flag of convenience rule, which allows ships to register with nations like Liberia or Panama, countries that have relatively lax regulations.There are eleven chapters, all of them dealing with different aspects of shipping and life at sea and two chapters devoted to piracy. I was most interested in the chapters on shipwrecks and rescue at sea. I was dismayed to learn that it is becoming more common for cargo ships to ignore distress signals so they can stick to their schedules.I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The chapter on maritime shipping's effect only whales was only part of the book I found a bit dull. I hope that the book gains a wide readership and the public becomes more aware of the difficult conditions sailors live under so we can have cheap goods.